J.L. Chestnut interview

This is an interview with Mr. J . L. Chestnut , an attorney from
Selma , Al abama. Mr. Chestnut was the first Black attorney in
Selma and was very active in the Civil Rights Movement in Selma
and continues to be at present . Mr . Chestnut was also a lifelong
member of the First Baptist Church of Selma , which was one of the
first churches pastor ed by the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth , who
later came to fame as a Civil Rights l eader in Birmingham . This
interview will concern Mr . Chestnut ' s remembrances of Reverend
Shuttlesworth . The interview was conducted on December 2 7 , 1989 ,
at Mr . Chestnut ' s law offi ces in Selma by Andrew M. Manis.
ANDREW MANIS : Mr . Chestnut, I realize that you are in the
process of publishing a book which will give a good deal o f thi s ,
but just for t he sake of the interview and for my own background,
could you give me your background in terms of fami ly , education ,
vocational background and what not .
MR . CHESTNUT : I was born here in Selma 59 years ago about four
blocks from where we are seated here now in my office at 1405
Jeff Davis Avenue . My parents are l ifelong residents of Dallas
County . My father comes from a little old p l ace called Beloit
which i s about e i ght miles South of Selma . My mot her has always
lived i n Selma . I suppose that I was a little bit better off
than many Blacks in t hat my father ran a market and the building
i s still here . So we were Black middle class . I graduated from
the public school system here in Selma . From there I graduated
from Di llard Unive r sity in New Orleans and then I went to Howard
University Law School . I spent two years i n the army . I was the
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first Bl ack lawyer to come back to Selma to practice law . That
was thi rty years ago now , no , thirty- one years ago . In the
process we had been invol ved one way or another i n a l l t he
struggles in Sel ma and to some extent even i n Birmingham .
Primaril y from the l egal point of view, the litigation and that
sort of thing . Of cour se I did some marching and we were always
havi ng problems with Martin Luther Ki ng and the Legal Defense
about marchi ng . They didn ' t think that i t was wise . We had been
here mainly carrying on t he struggle since the marches in 1965
which a lot of people don ' t seem to understand . Most of the
changes which have occurred in Selma and in the Black Belt did
not occur on Edmund Bridge but in a longer march that goes on
even as we speak . As you know there are p i ckets i n the streets
of Selma now. Almost no progress in Civil Rights has come to
Selma voluntarily or nowhere in the Black community . When I
speak of Selma I am really talking about five or six different
counties , of which Selma is a kind of unofficial capital. I
suppose as just a backgr ound , right across the central sect ion of
Alabama from the Mississippi line to the Georgia line there is
something that is call ed the Black Belt of Alabama and white
southerners are anxious to point out that that comes from the
color of the soil . That mayor may not be true but I know that
this section was where t he great slave plantations were , the
large slave plantations , and that is why until this day most of
the counti es in the Black Belt region are predominantly Black ,
70% Black. That is where you have the Black elected officials
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and so forth . If you start in Montgomery and go East , that is
called roughly loosely the Eastern Section of the Black Belt ,
Tuskegee Institute . That ' s where Booker T . Washington set up
shop in Tuskeegee, in the Black Belt where the Blacks work. West
of Montgomery would be the Western Section or half of the Black
Belt . That is the section that Selma is the hub of . People come
here to shop and all that kind of thing in Selma . It sets the
trend and the standards . Also the Black Belt area is the p l ace
most resistant to social change in general and Civil Rights in
particular. Somebody cal led it the South African Syndrome
because Blacks so outnumber whites . So any little inch we give
you will be drowned in a Bl ack sea , so you get this stiff
resistance . On the other hand , Selma has always been a
remarkable little town. No other town I know of in the South or
North with 20,000 peopl e has always had four or five Black
colleges . That has always been the case here. It is the case
now . No other town the s i ze of Selma -- 20 , 000 or between 10 , 000
and 13 , 000 Blacks when I was coming up would have three or four
Black doctors , three or more Black dentists. Even today in towns
the size of Selma which the census says there is about 28 , 000 ,
you don ' t find a town this size with three or four Black
dentists , three or four Black doctors . As a matter of fact , some
don ' t have any Bl ack doctors . Selma has always been peculiar ,
mostly peculiar because it has in addition to the three other
Bl ack colleges , it has always been headquarters of Selma
University which is owned by Black Baptists and which was put
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there primarily to train Black Baptist preachers , even to this
day . So it is now a four year institution . I think it just
became that last year . The primary emphasis remains on training
Black Baptist preachers . I ' ve always been amused and interested
in the fact that D. V. Jemison , Reverend D. V. Jemison, a little
Black preacher in Selma , Alabama , the principal there , the
preacher , the pastor, Tabernacle Baptist Church , clawed his way
from Selma to become the head of all the Black Baptists in the
United States. In fact his father is now [son , Theodore J.
Jemison] . And Jemison was a trustee at Selma University which
tells you something about how unique this little town is .
ANDREW MANIS: Why do you think it is?
MR . CHESTNUT : Primarily the fact that it is the hub of the Black
Belt , commercially , intellectually and otherwise . And I don ' t
think that that is unrelated to the fact that Selma University
was put here years and years ago and there she waS training these
Black Baptist preachers primarily were the leaders of the race. I
think that has had a profound impact on Selma.
ANDREW MANIS : What philosophy have you perceived as a long time
observer of Selma University? Is there a particular philosophy
that governs the educational process in Selma that so shapes the
ministers it produces?
MR . CHESTNUT : I would think that Selma University would be a
mainline Black Baptist operation. I am now the chairman of the
deacon board of First Baptist Church where Fred was pastor .
First Baptist , where, I think we have to look at it this way, for
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example, when I was growing up, and even before then, the primary
leaders in the Black community were preachers, mostly Baptist,
two or three school principals and the chairman of the deacon
board. There were no Black lawyers. There were no
industrialists. There were no journalists. There was no intra
power structure within the Black community. If one, or if an
institution were training Black preachers then they have an
inordinate impact on what happened or what did not happen in the
Black community. Selma University, in my opinion, was mainstream
in the sense that it was not rocking the boat at any cause.
Selma University, even as late as in the 1960s, when we were
taking children out of the public schools and out of Selma
University and putting them in lines and marches to demonstrate.
Some of the stoutest opposition came from a Dr. J. A. OWens, who
was then the president of Selma University, who threatened to
expel any students from Selma University who participated in
those marches. I remember Owens coming to my office on three or
four occasions to argue his case.
ANDREW MANIS: And his case was?
MR. CHESTNUT: That you cannot beg white people on Monday and
spit in their face on Tuesday, that there would be no Black
education in America, let alone in Alabama that amounted to
anything except for the generosity of white people, and that
changes would occur. The social change occurred gradually and
slowly and that you could not accelerate that process with any
lasting success, that you could create more harm than good and
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that he was not going to let us drag that institution down in
these senseless marches and so forth and he was prepared to
suspend any students who got involved.
ANDREW MANIS: Let me move to asking you a bit more specifically
about First Baptist Church. You mentioned it. In terms of its
history and its unique personality.
MR. CHESTNUT: First Baptist had the largest auditorium. It is
the largest Black church, building wise, in the whole Black Belt.
Not just the Western section. I don't think there is any Black
church in Montgomery with an auditorium larger than First
Baptist. It was built by a Black contractor who later became one
of the powers down there on the board of deacons. The building
itself is awesome in the sense that there are no supporting
pillars anywhere in this whole church. As a matter of fact, I'd
like to take you by there and show you. No supporting pillars or
anything and I remember my grandparents telling me about how the
members of the church would be walking through the streets and if
they saw a brick in the streets they would pick it up and take it
horne and each Sunday when they carne to church they would bring
these boxes of bricks and things they had picked up during the
week. Many of the bricks in that building down there carne that.
First Baptist has always reveled in the title First Baptist.
There is a mentality there that they are really and literally
first in so many ways. Even today there are some there who would
tell you with a kind of snobbishness that all the other Baptist
churches in one way or another descended from First Baptist which
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is literally true. But you see there is something snobbish about
the way that is said. The president of Selma University, more
often than not, was the president of First Baptist. The past
president, the dean of theology out there, so there has been this
close connection. The people in First Baptist have always
considered themselves to be somehow a cut above most Black
people. That is not near as pronounced at First Baptist now as
it was when I was a boy. But there are some remnants of that
down there now.
ANDREW MANIS: Is the building that you commented on, was that
the building the church had when Shuttlesworth was pastor?
MR. CHESTNUT: That's right.
ANDREW MANIS: No recent building?
MR. CHESTNUT: No, it is the same building but a tornado hit it.
I'll show you a picture -- I'll take you down there. It's just
two blocks away. A tornado hit it several years ago. You will
see it was knocked out at both sides. We had to rebuild it but
it is just like it was. Same building.
ANDREW MANIS: You grew up in this church?
MR. CHESTNUT: That's right. It is the only church I have ever
been a member of. My grandfather was a hell raiser down there.
As a matter of fact, I sit, he was a deacon and I sit in the
chair he sat in.
ANDREW MANIS: By hell raiser, you mean what?
MR. CHESTNUT: He and a man by the name of J. D. Pritchard, who
was the chairman of the deacon board. Pritchard was a good bit
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better educated. He ran a printing company. He printed a whole
lot of church bulletins. As a matter of fact he made a living
out of the church. He and my grandfather literally ran that
church and they were tyrants.
ANDREW MANIS: What sort of pastors -- you mentioned usually the
pastors or the presidents of Selma University were pastors of
your church. How would you say Shuttlesworth compared to
previous pastors?
MR. CHESTNUT: Shuttlesworth was never really accepted by First
Baptist. They never would have accepted him. Shuttlesworth to
them would be what my mother calls a country preacher. First
Baptist always really considered Shuttlesworth to be beneath that
church. Shuttlesworth, how old is he?
ANDREW MANIS: He's ah-h-h, 67.
MR. CHESTNUT: Shuttlesworth was a very young man when he came
through here from Selma University. I remember him living in the
parsonage which was about three blocks, matter of fact it is
still the parsonage. We rent it out now. But I used to deliver
groceries from my father's store down to that big family inn.
Shuttlesworth was a relatively young man lacking the polish, the
educational background and so forth that First Baptist Church
liked and preferred because like I told you First Baptist was
snobbish.
ANDREW MANIS: Let me stop you there and ask you, you say he did
not have the education and yet he was a graduate of Selma. That
seems like a contradiction to me.
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MR. CHESTNUT: Well now, what First Baptist would prefer, there
is some preacher had gone of to Virginia Union or Howard
University and had a Ph.D. and from Atlanta University. Though
they were close to Selma University and all of that, they would
really prefer somebody who had gone off to a more prestigious
institution and other churches ought to have somebody from Selma
University.
ANDREW MANIS: What do you recall about the circumstances
surrounding Shuttlesworth's coming to be the pastor at First
Baptist?
MR. CHESTNUT: I was a boy in junior high school and I really
don't recall that much about his coming to First Baptist. I
remember my grandfather who every morning got up preaching about
First Baptist. I came later to understand that Black men having
been denied the opportunity to engage in regular politics and
power struggles and because they didn1t have the background or
the connections or the money to become industrial giants -- all
of that more often than not came out inside the Black Baptist
church. That is where he flexed his muscles. That is the one
place he felt that he was a man and in charge. And then some of
them were raising hell all the time when there was really nothing
to raise hell about. But that was their sense of their politics
and their whole macho thing of being male and being in charge.
My grandfather used to get up every morning before he went to
work. My grandfather would get up every morning raising hell
about this or that at church, more often than not creating
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problems where none really existed. The first time I ever heard
Fred Shuttl esworth ' s name came from the lips of my grandfather
who said that he thought that the boy would do all right. He was
talking to my grandmother. And my grandmother gave him that look
because she understood what that all meant . The years later that
I came to understand what my grandfather had in mind and what J.
D. Pritchard had in mind . That i s how Fred Shuttlesworth got at
First Baptist in the first place . They had been dealing with
some candidates who were pretty educated and all that . Pritchard
and them were having some problems dealing with them . They were
determined that they were going to get somebody they could lead
around by the nose. That is what they meant by "that boy ." That
i s the first I ever heard of Fred Shuttlesworth.
ANDREW MANIS: Was there any particular issue where they came to
be at odds or was this just a general muscle flexing exerci se?
MR. CHESTNUT: Shuttlesworth , as I said , was never in my opinion
really accepted in that church . There were vague complaints and
rumblings almost from the day he set foot in that church .
Privately you would hear , "Well, he is not our type " or "He does
not speak well enough . Well , what they didn ' t like was he was
not the president of Selma University. He wasn ' t a man of great
prestige . It was said from time to time, "He ' s just a little
country preacher. He ought to have a little country church and
not First Baptist ." It may be that in time Shuttlesworth could
have preached out of that . Black preachers have been known to
preach themselves out of the worst difficulties . They catch them
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in the bed with a woman and all that and they come back and
preach their way out of that. He might have been able to preach
his way out of that if that had been the only problem. But even
then there was , by those standards , there was some militancy in
Shuttlesworth ' s sermons and that certainly was not going to set
well in First Baptist. That was not going to set wel l anywhere
in any Black church in Selma and from time to time Shuttlesworth ,
as well as making comments privately , I mean in just casual
comments , in formal sermons there was a hint of militancy about
his preaching .
ANDREW MANIS , I ' d like for you to elaborate on that if you
could , the nature of thi s militancy , is it primarily a kind of a
religious militancy o r did it shade off into .. .
MR . CHESTNUT : It was a social militancy. It was a harbinger of
what was to come . I think to really get a handle on Fred
Shuttlesworth one had to understand that of all of the leaders
around Martin Luther King , it was only Shuttlesworth who created
a Movement where he was and remained after the Movement . C. T .
Vivian and Wyatt and none of these peopl e did that . They came
and went with King. Shuttlesworth created , and I heard Martin
say this any number of times , except for Fred Shuttlesworth , it
is unlikely there would have been a Birmingham Movement . It was
not merely that Bull Connor was in Birmingham that Martin went to
Birmi ngham . Hell, there was Bull Connors allover Alabama . But
it was also because Fred Shuttlesworth was there . I've hear d
Martin say that . Even when Fred Shuttlesworth was in Selma there
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was a hint of this social militancy , and I don ' t mean
theologically, in what he had to say . In his day when he was
here , the police were the law , literally . When they came to your
house and knocked on the door and you said "Who is it? " and they
said "The law , " and they did what they wanted. I mean, you could
kill a Black and they would not have an inquest about it . They
would just say , "Well , the nigger got out of line" and that was
the end of that . And you had the l owest type of white people who
were police officers . Nobody else wanted it . I t didn 't pay
anything . So you had a ve r y dangerous and outrageous situation .
It was not all that uncommon for a Black to be k i lled like a dog
for nothing . But the unspoken understanding in Selma -- Black
Selma -- when that happened, Black Selma hardly mentioned it . If
they did , it was only to another Black that you really trusted .
You said it quietly and you just mentioned what had happened .
That was a l l and then you would go back as usua l . It was not
unknown for Shuttlesworth to make a reference if somebody got
slaughtered , if some Black got shot down like a dog by a
policeman , Shuttlesworth would make some kind of a reference to
that and a negative reference. He was known to mention justice .
He also was known to mention something about voting and he did
that. That made my grandfather and J . D. Pritchard and all of
them extremely upset . They had all these connections with white
bankers . Many of them worked for these white people downtown.
These white bankers , white leaders , white politicians were
playing a game. If a Black could ingratiate himself with a white
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banker he could say, "You know , we got all this -- that little
ole preacher we got down there, it seems to me he ' s anti- white or
something like that and I 'm gonna get rid of him . " But the
banker wouldn ' t even have to suggest it to them , that Black
deacon would ingratiate himself even more so when he back up
these powerful white people. He became a good nigger and all
that . I don ' t know that that happened in Shuttlesworth's case
but I know generally that ' s the way things were . I know that
Shuttlesworth ran the risk of al l of that by referring from time
to time to some of these taboo subjects. I don ' t mean to
indicate to you that at that point Shuttlesworth was anywhere
near a Civil Rights leader . He wasn ' t. I don't mean t o indicate
to you that he was in the pulpit every Sunday preaching a
militant theology or a militant sociol ogy . He wasn ' t. He was a
gifted, main line Black Baptist preacher but somewhat more
sensitive to some of these other things and there was some of the
rebel in him. I suppose that had something to do with the fact
that he was a young man on the way up.
ANDREW MANIS : Shuttlesworth always seemed to , well , let me back
up and say that there is a long tradition in the Black church,
particularly the Black Baptist church , of very powerful pastors
and a deep strong sense of authority that churches confer on
their pastors . Coupled with that was in Shuttlesworth as I have
grown to understand him , perhaps a deeper sense of his own
authority as pastor . I guess the question that I want you to
answer for me, as you compare Shuttlesworth with other pastors at
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First Baptist and other Black pastors you have seen in your
lifetime , would you say that he has a stronger more dictatorial
presence or attitude than other Black Baptist pastors that you
have encountered in your life?
MR . CHESTNUT : I guess the only way I can approach that is to say
this to you. First Baptist was unwilling -- well , the officers ,
J. D. Pritchard and my grandfather , the deacon board and the
trustee board were unwilling to give to Shuttlesworth the
authority and the power to maneuver and manipulate that it would
have given the one that they would have considered of their kind.
Had Shuttlesworth been the president of Selma University, certain
powers at First Baptist would have accrued to him without
argument. Because he wasn ' t , there were those in that church who
were determined that he would never have those powers . I don't
know whether Shuttlesworth was more dictatorial than other Black
preachers . I only know that he would never get the chance in
First Baptist . Because there were those who considered him
temporary there from the first moment he came. He just wasn ' t
their type and they were not about to give him any powers.
ANDREW MANIS: Was there a relatively large negative vote to call
him when he was called?
MR . CHESTNUT : What I heard was there was not a large negative
vote. At First Baptist, whatever the deacons and trustees
decide, the church was going to go pretty much along with that
because the strongest males are on those two boards. The rest
are females and any other kind of thing. And the rest are trying
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to get on the board . So there would not have been a large
negative vote once there was a decision to call him . There would
just not be the enthusiasm that would ordinarily be there in the
calling of a new pastor . There was also a tacit understanding
that he is temporary here any young man on his way up where we
don ' t think he is going to be able to make it and last with us.
My understanding is that Shuttlesworth would never been called
down there except there were some powerful preachers they
respected who were saying "Give the boy a chance ." Otherwise
they never would have done it.
ANDREW MANIS: It didn ' t occur to me to ask if your grandfather
and J . D. Pritchard were so powerful and so quickly took a, for
lack of a better word, dislike to Shuttlesworth , why he was
called in the first place?
MR. CHESTNUT: My grandmother said to me one or two times, " I
think that Professor Dinkins .
ANDREW MANIS: The president?
MR. CHESTNUT: (Yeah) who was a lieutenant or captain in World
War I, who had a Ph.D . from Brown University, lived in the
largest house with stained windows and all that and a man of
great prestige and learned , literally so, he had considerable
influence over J . D. Pritchard and my grandfather. And my
grandmother indicated to me that Shuttlesworth had some powerful
people in opportuning her husband and J . D. Pritchard that this
was a step up for Shuttlesworth. I got the impression that
Shuttlesworth was campaigning like he was running for office.
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That's what she said. I don ' t know. But I do know that Denkins
had great sway with Pritchard and my grandfather. And if he went
to them and said "Give the boy a shot " it is more than likely
that they would do it. And it was uncharacteristic for my
grandfather to even refer to a preacher he didn't like or look
down on "as the boy ." Because he had more respect for the
pulpit. Now that is a phrase that would come directly from
Dinkins because Shuttlesworth was a student at his university and
all that. My grandfather was told by somebody that he thought
that the boy would do all right . So I suspect
ANDREW MANIS: Now in other interviews that I have done with
Reverend Shuttlesworth , I get obviously his point of view . I am
wondering if you have a point of view about why Dr . Denkins was
so enamored with Fred Shuttlesworth when there were several other
preacher boys who were studying for the ministry at Selma,
persons like Reverend [N. H.] Smith in Birmingham, persons who in
some way had to have more polish than Shuttlesworth . At least do
now. Why do you think Dinkins was so taken with Shuttlesworth so
that he became kind of a protege?
MR . CHESTNUT: First , I don ' t know that he became a protege of
Dinkins but Fred Shuttlesworth would have a similar impact on
Martin Luther King but for different reasons. Shuttlesworth is a
strong man . There is no question about that. Shuttlesworth was
-- the fact that his age that he would be vying for or thinking
that he could pastor First Baptist says a hell of a lot about him
right there. Most preachers his age would not even be vying for
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First Baptist . They would likely concede that to some of the
elders , people with more prestige and more education .
Shuttlesworth wouldn ' t concede to a damn thing . Shuttlesworth
was out there campaigning for that job . There was also a kind of
intensity about Shuttlesworth then and now. An intensity
commitment you might want to call it . He wanted to be an
effective , important preacher and he was not necessarily wedded
to going about that in the traditional way . Shuttlesworth was
prepared to take on the Black establishment if it was going to
promote Shuttlesworth. He had a good mind and he worked hard .
He had a family and yet he was going to school; a man of thrift .
All of these things woul d have powerful appeal to Dinkins the
same way they would have powerful appeal to Booker T . Washington .
Black Baptist preachers , many of them have been notorious
womanizers and take a little nip and all that. Denkins was dead
set against all that. He was straight as an arrow and
Shuttlesworth, there was hardly a hint about him morally and all
that . There were ones at First Baptist trying to find -- they
it -- the same with Mrs . Shuttlesw . All of these things
have an appeal to a man like Dinkins. Shuttlesworth was not his
protege but he would be one of his prize pupils I would say .
ANDREW MANIS : The comment you made about his willingness to take
on the Black establishment to use your words "if it would promote
Shuttlesworth" could be interpreted as an inordinate ambition .
MR . CHESTNUT: I think that ' s true.
ANDREW MANIS: Would you say that?
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MR. CHESTNUT: I think that's true. Shuttlesworth had been
promoting Shuttlesworth for a long long time and he ' s damn good
at it . He's come from nowhere and became a principal figure in
the Civil Rights struggle . He became a principal advisor to
Martin Luther King though there were people there far more
learned than Fred Shuttlesworth. There weren't any there who
were more courageous though. There were some courageous people
with Martin Luther King but they weren't more courageous than
Fred Shuttlesworth . Shuttlesworth had an understanding of people
and politics that most Black preachers don 't even have. They
just go along with whatever the program is and try to promote
that church and promote themselves. Shuttlesworth was a kind of
contradiction in the sense that he was ambitious in promoti ng
himself and all that but not so much in the traditional sense
that he was unaware that the larger politics of the city he was
living in and prepared to understand it and use it. He did that
in Birmingham . Martin Luther King d i d not have to go to
Birmingham to tell Shuttlesworth that Bull Connor was vulnerable
and it was a situation that could be exploi ted. Shuttlesworth
was t elling Martin Luther King that. Now I know that to be a
fact . One of the reasons I know that i s that Marti n had been to
Birmingham and they were trying to decide to go back . I and some
others were trying to get him to come to Selma . We l ost out .
They eventually came to Selma but they went back to Birmingham
and then came to Selma . The reason they came back to Selma; I
mean the r eason they went to Birmingham was Fred Shuttlesworth.
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Fred Shuttlesworth understood that situation. He understood the
Black establishment. He deliberately cultivated Dinkins and
others and he knew how to do that. He was promoting Fred
Shuttlesworth. I think the primary difference in Fred
Shuttlesworth and most Black preachers of his generation in the
South were that they under no circumstances were going to step
outside of tradition. They were not going to take on the
establishment Black or white. Shuttlesworth would promote
himself as far as he could in both of these areas without taking
them on but if he reached a point where he had to take them on,
he was willing to do that. The mere fact that he was out there
talking about pastoring First Baptist, is a signal of that here
is a young man on the way up. He doesn't care about tradition
except that it works for him. Where it doesn't, he discards it.
Lastly, I think that Dinkins was intrigued in Shuttlesworth in
that Shuttlesworth was everything that Dinkins wasn't, and
probably wished he wasn't.
ANDREW MANIS: So recognizing a degree of healthy ambition in
Shuttlesworth as you do, other writers who talked about Dr. King
I think at times have been overly conscious of the egotism of
someone like Shuttlesworth over against what they perceive as the
humility of Martin Luther King.
MR. CHESTNUT: Martin wasn't all that humble, but go ahead.
ANDREW MANIS: Well, I'll let you comment on that, too, if you
will, but I guess I am asking you in some ways to help me
understand this question of the egotism of Shuttlesworth. At
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what point would you criticize it? I am probably asking you to
oversimplify this and I recognize that -- I mean some people
would call that kind of egotism sin. I guess I am asking you to
evaluate it theologically or something or ethically how you
interpret the kind of self-promotion that you are describing.
Would you generally give it -- on an ethical scale would you give
it a high score?
MR. CHESTNUT: I don 't know about scoring it. But in the two
years that he was here and looking back through eyes of all these
years of my own experience I think that Shuttlesworth had the
best of both worlds in that he was genuinely concerned and a
sincere preacher, promoting the Lord's gospel, saving souls so to
speak and really trying to do something to help his people live a
fuller life. At the same t i me, by doing that, he promoted
himself in that the more successful he would be in promoting
himself, the greater his opportunity to carry out his mission. I
don 't think that that social position, or that position is unique
to Shuttlesworth. Almost instantaneously I can think of any
number of Black Baptist preachers who have gone forward pretty
much on the same thing. One that comes to mind immedi ately is
that of Adam Clayton Powell (you've heard of the Abyssian Baptist
Church) who went on to Congress and all of that. He was the
spokesman of Black America, of Black Baptist preachers, who
obviously promoted Adam and who obviously had an ego probably the
size of Harlem. But in promoting Adam he was able to do a whole
lot of good. Looking back I would not have considered
20
Shuttlesworth as any more dictatorial than most Black Baptist
preachers or any more an egotist. Most of were treated as
princes anyway. What I see about Shuttlesworth, as I keep
saying, the intensity of his commitment and his sensitivity to
certain matters that others were accustomed and conditioned to
overlooking. I see a young man from the rural, ambitious, but
probably not to a fault. Strong, but I think that in part
derives from what he had learned to that point about how Black
preachers operate and who is supposed to be in charge of the
church and all that. I think he was merely imitating his elders
who were his predecessors. I didn't find him, as I said, now he
didn't get the chance, he was just here about two years, he
didn't get the chance if he had the dictatorial tendencies, he
didn't get the chance to exercise. Also, Shuttlesworth was
perceptive enough to know looking back that in any battle in
First Baptist with J. D. Pritchard and Louellen Phillips on the
other side, Shuttlesworth was bound to lose. I think he was
shrewd enough to try and resolve what he could before the battle
lines were drawn. He was forever visiting with J. D. Pritchard,
whose printing shop was right down the street from my father's
market. He was also forever visiting with my grandfather whom I
was in and out of the house. I stayed over there much of the
time. Even then I understood that he was doing what almost any
preacher, even a preacher who was accepted down there, was doing.
He was paying court to the two most powerful egotists and
troublemakers down there. That is what he was doing. And
21
Shuttlesworth understood that.
ANDREW MANIS: It sounds very much like you, if you were
evaluating that situation in terms of who was right and who was
wrong, it sounds like you would come down on the side of
Shuttlesworth rather than Pritchard and your grandfather.
MR. CHESTNUT: I would. And that is not because of what
Shuttlesworth subsequently did with his life and the great
contributions he made in Birmingham and elsewhere in the
Movement. It is because I really don't think that there was any
acceptable basis to have dismissed him from that church and I
think that had he stayed there we would have been better off.
Not merely at First Baptist. I think Selma would have been
better off had we been able to keep a man like Shuttlesworth.
And I think only instinctively, I think people like my
grandfather and J. D. Pritchard understood that and they were on
the opposite side. And that is one of the reasons Shuttlesworth
had to leave. Shuttlesworth did not corne to First Baptist trying
to make enemies. He came there trying to make friends. He tried
to have a church program but they were not going to let him. I
opposed it. The best thing that ever happened to Fred
Shuttlesworth is that First Baptist discharged him.
ANDREW MANIS: But he was fired as you understand?
MR. CHESTNUT: Oh, they voted him out. There is no question
about it. He had a different view of that. What does he say?
ANDREW MANIS: He doesn't use the word "fired."
MR. CHESTNUT: What does he say?
22
ANDREW MANIS: He leaves it more general than that -- that "I
left."
MR. CHESTNUT: My mother, who only went to church on a sporadic
basis , as a matter of fact I was just talking to her this morning
and I was telling her that you were coming here. She admitted to
me, and I heard her say this once or twice before, my mother and
my aunt, who only went down there on a sporadic basis, didn't
hardly know what was going on but my grandfather recruited her to
come down to that meeting to vote against Shuttlesworth. They
voted against him.
ANDREW MANIS: You said he wanted to institute a program. Do you
have any recollection of the kind of program, would anything he
wanted to do would have been rejected by the power people.
MR. CHESTNUT: I don't know whether they would have just willy
nilly objected to anything he would have had to do. He would
have to have a program that was traditional in every way. But
did not undermine or reflect negatively on the way the people at
First Baptist saw themselves. For example, if he is talking
about feeding the poor and all that, that was going to have to be
done in First Baptist ' s spire. It certainly was not going to be
done equals for feeding each other. It's going to have to be the
hand me down, that there are people superior here and there are
people inferior here. Any other program that he would institute
there would have to take into consideration these prejudices and
all these things which was running so deep in First Baptist. I
tell you another thing that he was very concerned about. I
23
remember talking about this. Country preaching. They decided he
was a country preacher . They did not want any country preaching
and any country singing in First Baptist. First Baptist had a
big organ and all that and they got their spire music. I don ' t
know whether you know, you probably do, Black preachers have , a
lot of them have this sing-song they get into when they roll it
to a climax. They didn ' t want any of that at First Baptist. If
he brought that in , he woul d be in deep trouble. They didn't
want any country singing and they didn't want any country
preaching .
ANDREW MANIS: Country singing, just to get the terminology here,
is country singing and country preaching the same thing
basically?
MR. CHESTNUT: Well it is kind of a morning thing. If you go to
a Black church and have a devotional, it is acceptable at First
Baptist for the devotional period. But you can't that kind of
moaning anywhere else . Even today, you know , in the Black
church , you know, we respond to preaching. First Baptist Church
has always looked down on that. Even now I'll say "Say it!"
They don ' t like it .
ANDREW MANIS: So would you say that he would sort of move into
the country preaching mode regularly?
MR. CHESTNUT: Not often but from time to time he would get happy
himself and wind up in that sing- song thing and you would see
people looking around like - - but he was a smart fellow . He was
aware that that was not really acceptable there. He didn ' t do it
24
often, but he'd get caught up sometimes just on a Sunday. If
that was really Fred Shuttlesworth, he might still be here. He
was comfortable with that and it would come out from time to time
but they didn't like it.
ANDREW MANIS: It's interesting that you mention that because
talking to his church members in Bethel in Birmingham where he
went after he left First Baptist, it is their recollection, at
least one person, that he tended to move into this mode regularly
almost every Sunday. It would seem that that was his more ...
MR. CHESTNUT: His natural style. He was inhibited down here by
all kind of traditions that are part of First Baptist. I guess
he was relieved to work the way it was best for him. He really
got caught up in it.
ANDREW MANIS: Were you yourself there in any discussions that
the church had?
MR. CHESTNUT: No, I was a young boy.
ANDREW MANIS: Did you vote when the vote was taken to dismiss?
MR. CHESTNUT: No, no, no. My grandmother and I were opposed.
My grandmother didn't even vote. That's one reason why my
grandfather recruited his daughter-in-law. She didn't approve of
that.
ANDREW MANIS: Why didn't she go and vote the opposite way?
MR. CHESTNUT: Because it would create all kind of problems at
home. So she just left it up to them and went on about her
business.
ANDREW MANIS: So you remember yourself having a sense of being
25
opposed to what was goi ng on?
MR. CHESTNUT: I remember talking to my grandmother about it.
ANDREW MANIS : What do you recall about your conver sation?
MR. CHESTNUT: I remember her saying that Louel l yn and Pritchard
ought to leave the man alone and that they were forever raising
this and raising that in God ' s House and she was concerned that
somehow it mi ght even split the church because there were some
people really supporting Fred Shuttlesworth. If they were not
s upporting Shuttlesworth , they'd had enough of Pritchard and my
grandfather and that whole clique down there and all that. My
grandmother dearly loved that church but she dearly loved her
husband and in talking to me she was really in a sense almost
talking to herself. She was searching for a way in how she could
deal with Louellyn and to re i n him in and all that and I remember
saying to her that Shuttlesworth was out of place there and that
they didn 't want him in the first place and he knew that and
that's all they were in behind because he was country . She
real l y got on my case about that. Even today my mother denies
that they don't want to touch it, they will never admit it. They
will never admit that First Baptist is snooty . They won't. My
grandmother said that didn't have anything to do with it. It
wasn't that at all .
ANDREW MANIS: It was the country bias?
MR. CHESTNUT: Yeah. It was just that Shuttlesworth would not
drink Louellyn and them's water. That's the way they put it.
They were determined that they weren't going to have nobody down
26
there that they couldn ' t control and she just didn't like it . I
kept saying that I didn 't think that that was all there was to it
and she knew that was not all there was to it. They were scared
of it and they didn't like it and they were going to get rid of
h i m one way or another. I talked to her more than once about
that .
ANDREW MANIS: Occasionally you see things like this happen and
the people who are more or l ess in control and recruit the right
number of votes are able to have their will done in the
congregation and sometimes you discover that you actually went
and you polled the individual members of the congregation
individually apart from the i nfluence of these power peopl e that
they would have been in support of the pastor.
MR. CHESTNUT: Probably .
ANDREW MANIS : Do you think that is the case? Ironically , it is
a strange quirk of the way democratically run churches operate ,
but occasionally you find where really the people are for the
pastor but somehow or a nother through circumstance the vote turns
out negativel y.
MR . CHESTNUT: Let me respond to it this way. I mentioned
earlier to you that Black preachers have been known , white
preacher s too, who preach out of all kinds of difficulties.
They've come to church and have not been liked initially. But
peopl e would come to l ove them. So some preachers have been able
to do a whole lot of things from the pul pit and it may be that
Shuttlesworth could have preached his way into the hearts of the
27
members in the pews in time. But it would have been an uphill
fight all the way. Because, remember, that whole church, not
just the officers and all that, we are First Baptist literally,
and he was never what they considered the caliber of it. I don't
know how far he had come in dealing with that when they came
around to have the vote to discharge him. I rather doubt that he
had a majority. But there is no question that some people in
that church supported him. And there is no doubt that some
people who, if they didn't give a damn about him, they had had
enough of Louellyn Phillips and J. D. Pritchard. But Pritchard
was a man who, because he owned his own business, and this is in
line with what you were just talking about, he could take off a
half a day, a whole day, whatever he needed, and if necessary, go
from member's house to member's house and he did it, campaigning
and all like that. He had considerable respect in that church as
chairman of the deacon board and superintendent of the Sunday
school for fifty years. But he also had some people in there who
didn't like him. My grandfather was not an educated man and he
looked up to Pritchard, at least to the extent that he would look
up to anybody, because of Pritchard's education. But my
grandfather was street wise. One of the most perceptive
individuals I have ever known in terms of reading people and all
that. And one of them he read was Pritchard and he was close to
Louellyn Phillips. Louellyn, as I said, had no education but he
could see around corners that Pritchard couldn't. Shuttlesworth
was well aware of all of those things. In even trying to preach
28
his way into the good graces of the members in the pews he had to
be careful not to alienate unnecessarily either Pritchard or
Louellyn. He knew that Pritchard was better educated that
Shuttlesworth and he knew that Louellyn had these gifts and all
and both had enormous influence in that church. So Shuttlesworth
would have problems. They would sit there and if he were
politicking, if they understood that the nature of his sermon is
more politics and more of a promotion for Shuttlesworth then they
would be some reaction which would increase their rumbling and
going on. Shuttlesworth was not unaware of all that.
ANDREW MANIS: Do you remember any of the sort of crystallizing
events that lead to his departure?
MR. CHESTNUT: I just remember the night of the meeting because
my mother went and that was highly unusual.
ANDREW MANIS: After Shuttlesworth left and went to Bethel in
Birmingham and still later became involved with the Civil Rights
Movement after the Montgomery boycott and began the Movement in
1956 in Birmingham and on into his Civil Rights activities
through the sixties, did he ever come back to Selma during those
years?
MR. CHESTNUT: I don't recall him ever come back to preach. I am
sure he did. I don't recall. But he would come back to Selma
from time to time. There are people from Selma who have very
kind and respect for feelings for Fred Shuttlesworth. I called
about four or five members of the church as chairman of the
deacon board because I wanted to make them available to you.
29
They r efu sed . I talked t o Mrs. Morningshine. They don't want to
say anything about Shuttlesworth . They just refused to do it.
They said they wanted you to know that he was a young man on his
way up and that he did good but he wasn't here l ong enough for
them to form any great j udgments about him which would be a lie.
ANDREW MANIS: When I talked with a coupl e of them on the phone
who had r efused t o t a lk with me .
MR. CHESTNUT: Did you talk ,with Lucille Taylor?
ANDREW MANIS: I talked with them on the phone but not in an
interview. I guess what I am interested i n asking is that , well ,
as a young person who was here, who has been a member of this
church and who a l so later became involved in Civil Rights i n
Selma , i s the r e any way that you would say that Shuttle sworth had
some influence on you?
MR. CHESTNUT: Not really . I wasn't that close to him and
Shuttlesworth wasn 't here long enough to have that kind of
impact. No , I wouldn ' t think so.
ANDREW MANIS: As the Movement more or less began to •
MR. CHESTNUT: I 'll tell you one thing though. As the chairman
of t he deacon board I agreed we have a young pastor there now.
He is about 35 years old and he has got all these degrees . There
would be no r egular joint meetings of the trustees and the
deacons at First Bapti st, which i s the opposite of a hundred
year s of tradition down there, that deacons would do what deacons
traditionally do and trustees would do what they tradi tionall y do
-- t he tactic behind this i s that I didn't want those two boards
30
to get into some powerful clique at First Baptist and dictate to
the young preacher. One of the reasons I insisted on that goes
back to Shuttlesworth and some other things. While He hasn't had
any impact on be Civil-Rights-wise, I also insisted, and I told
them this when they were talking about making me the chairman of
the deacon board. I consider the pastor the leader of the
church. We as deacons are there to assist him. And that is all
I intend to do as long as I am the chairman of that board. We
are not copastors and I am very sensitive whenever I see either
the deacons or trustees trying to interpose themselves between
the pastor and the flock. Because I remember my grandfather and
I remember J. D. Pritchard.
ANDREW MANIS: Just for background for myself, what are the
differing roles of the board of trustees and the board of deacons
in First Baptist Church and maybe you want to comment more
generally, in Black Baptist preachers.
MR. CHESTNUT: Well, most Black Baptist churches are legal
corporations, legal entities. The law requires that you have
trustees so that somebody will be responsible for the corporate
assets and the business side of the church. That is what
trustees do. They keep the property up. They handle the money.
They pay the pastor. They pay the choirs and that sort of thing.
The deacons in the Baptist church come not so much as a creature
of the law. They don't come at all as a creature of the law but
scripturally. They assist the pastor in communion and visiting
the sick and looking out for the widows and that sort of thing.
31
ANDREW MANIS: Deacons in Black Baptist churches don't have any
particular say-so about business activities.
MR. CHESTNUT: They are not supposed to, but in actuality, as at
First Baptist, of course, what they do is, you find the same
people, more often than not, are deacons and trustees. Where
that is the case, the deacons insist on jOint meetings with the
trustees and so that a joint meeting becomes almost a steering
committee inside the church with more power than the pastor.
That is why I had them agree that we are not going to have any
joint meetings. I am an attorney and I know more about deeds and
property and all that than any of them down there. But I don't
have anything to do with that because I am not a trustee. The
church would make me a trustee just like that if I asked but I am
not going to ask because I think that that line of demarcation
ought to be there to centralize all this power. Because the
moment you do that you are going to come up with people
interposing themselves between the pastor and the flock. Now I
don't believe in a preacher being a dictator in a church but I
think he has to have enough power to lead and to get his program
over and if you don't trust him to do that, you don't have any
business calling him in the first place.
ANDREW MANIS: I think it boils down to a fairly delicate balance
here and you do have, on occasion, pastors who, in a sense, grab
for more power.
MR. CHESTNUT: All the time. That is common.
ANDREW MANIS: When the newspapers in the early sixties -- well,
32
I have to correct myself because the Birmingham News didn't want
to talk about Shuttlesworth very much, but when the news services
and the Black newspapers and what not were full of discussions of
Fred Shuttlesworth, do you remember any conversations among the
folk at First Baptist, commenting about where their former pastor
had gone or what he was doing at that time?
MR. CHESTNUT: Oh yeah, ! didl I raised it and rubbed their
noses in it.
ANDREW MANIS: Can you give me an instance or two when you did
that?
MR. CHESTNUT: Well, for a long time we were in a struggle trying
to get Martin Luther King to come to Selma. And Martin Luther
King was undecided . He felt that in birmingham there was United
States Steel, headquartered not in Birmingham, but in Pittsburgh.
Probably more liberal than conservative and thus would only
tolerate Bull Connor to a point in pulling the ranks. Nothing
like that existed in the Black Belt. Moreover, Birmingham was a
city compact, communications and things were far easier. In the
Black Belt you had what you called the wide open spaces
different counties and all that. Far more difficult to organize
and motivate than a city. Thirdly, there was Shuttlesworth,
tried and proved in Birmingham. We had nobody here to match
that. We had Jim Clark. Well, they had Bull Connor. So, it was
of major concern to some of us in trying to persuade Martin
Luther King otherwise and it was of major concern to Fred
Shuttlesworth that the struggle was just beginning in Birmingham.
33
That is where Custer1s last stand ought to be fought so to speak.
So, I was forever getting up at First Baptist, not just at First
Baptist, but at various clubs around Selma. I was forever
getting praises and denouncing of Shuttlesworth all at the same
time. There were times when I thought that it was time for the
Movement to come here because the Bourbon planters in the Black
Belt had run Alabama politics for a thousand years. So many
years and, hell, United States Steel had never run politics in
the State of Alabama and never would. So goes the Black Belt.
So goes Alabama. If we could topple these white governments in
these predominantly Black counties in the Black Belt, Hell, we
could run Alabama. That wasn1t Shuttlesworth1s point of view and
so for a long time we in Selma considered Shuttlesworth a major
obstacle. We had grudging respect for him.
ANDREW MANIS: So you praised him for what he was doing in
Birmingham but denounced him because it was taking the attention
of the Movement away from Selma.
MR. CHESTNUT: We couldn1t get it to Selma. It had never come
here. It undermined our efforts to bring the Movement to Selma.
ANDREW MANIS: In 1964 and 1965 when the Movement did come to
Selma, did Shuttlesworth have any minor or major role?
MR. CHESTNUT: Oh, yeah, he was in and out of here making
speeches and all that. You could announce that Shuttlesworth was
going to speak at a mass meeting and you were sure to have a
crowd.
ANDREW MANIS: Do you recall, not necessarily any of his
34
speeches, but what role would you say he played in Selma?
MR. CHESTNUT: Martin Luther King, when he first came here, told
me that the initial and auspicious opposition to the Movement was
not going to come from whites and it was not going to come from
Blacks generally but it was going to come from his brothers of
the cloth -- the Black clergy. And he was just as right as he
could be. Most of them, as I said, mainstream, had these ties in
downtown Selma in the bank, the city hall, the courthouse and all
that and they were the leaders and they were against anything
that disturbed that arrangement. We could not even -- it took us
a long time to get a church that would even let us have a mass
meeting. Shuttlesworth was invaluable in dealing -- all of these
were his folks out there. They related far more to Shuttlesworth
than they did to Martin Luther King with his Ph.D. He was up
there and they were down there but Shuttlesworth was down there
with them and he could talk with them. Shuttlesworth undermined
a whole lot of opposition that Martin would have had, more so
than he got, from Black preachers and al that. Those who were
not going to participate, at least they would shut up. There is
also one thing to get up and denounce Martin Luther King is that
"interloper from Atlanta." You canlt very well denounce Fred
Shuttlesworth, who went to Selma University, who pastored First
Baptist, and 96 miles away in Birmingham, standing up and getting
beaten and everything. You can't very well call him an
interloper and tell him to go back to Atlanta. So he was very
important.
35
ANDREW MANIS: What about when he moved to Cincinnati, in 1964
and in 1965 and in fact, in 1963, when the big demonstrations
occurred in Birmingham, his official residence was no longer in
Birmingham.
MR. CHESTNUT: Well , Shuttlesworth was down here so often.
ANDREW MANIS: He was still identified.
MR. CHESTNUT: Yeah, I don ' t think most people even knew he ever
moved to Cincinnati.
ANDREW MANIS: So, I am interested in his role in Selma because
it is very difficult to dig that out, unless you talk to him,
unless you talk to people in Selma.
MR. CHESTNUT: I remember him making speeches . I remember many
strategy sessions. When he was in town he would be there and he
was a man that Martin Luther King listened to. Fred had proved
that he understood the power structure and how white people were
going to react and all of that. Martin had great respect for his
powers along those lines . The third thing I just mentioned to
you was that Shuttlesworth was at our level. With the average
little Black preacher around here, Martin Luther King never was
and their opposition to Martin would have been far more intense
except that he had Shuttlesworth out there running point man, and
they couldn't very well deal with him.
ANDREW MANIS; well , I appreciate your time.
MR. CHESTNUT: Okay , I am glad to talk with you. I have people
waiting out here .
36

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Holding.Institution

Birmingham Public Library (Alabama)

Full Text

This is an interview with Mr. J . L. Chestnut , an attorney from
Selma , Al abama. Mr. Chestnut was the first Black attorney in
Selma and was very active in the Civil Rights Movement in Selma
and continues to be at present . Mr . Chestnut was also a lifelong
member of the First Baptist Church of Selma , which was one of the
first churches pastor ed by the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth , who
later came to fame as a Civil Rights l eader in Birmingham . This
interview will concern Mr . Chestnut ' s remembrances of Reverend
Shuttlesworth . The interview was conducted on December 2 7 , 1989 ,
at Mr . Chestnut ' s law offi ces in Selma by Andrew M. Manis.
ANDREW MANIS : Mr . Chestnut, I realize that you are in the
process of publishing a book which will give a good deal o f thi s ,
but just for t he sake of the interview and for my own background,
could you give me your background in terms of fami ly , education ,
vocational background and what not .
MR . CHESTNUT : I was born here in Selma 59 years ago about four
blocks from where we are seated here now in my office at 1405
Jeff Davis Avenue . My parents are l ifelong residents of Dallas
County . My father comes from a little old p l ace called Beloit
which i s about e i ght miles South of Selma . My mot her has always
lived i n Selma . I suppose that I was a little bit better off
than many Blacks in t hat my father ran a market and the building
i s still here . So we were Black middle class . I graduated from
the public school system here in Selma . From there I graduated
from Di llard Unive r sity in New Orleans and then I went to Howard
University Law School . I spent two years i n the army . I was the
1
first Bl ack lawyer to come back to Selma to practice law . That
was thi rty years ago now , no , thirty- one years ago . In the
process we had been invol ved one way or another i n a l l t he
struggles in Sel ma and to some extent even i n Birmingham .
Primaril y from the l egal point of view, the litigation and that
sort of thing . Of cour se I did some marching and we were always
havi ng problems with Martin Luther Ki ng and the Legal Defense
about marchi ng . They didn ' t think that i t was wise . We had been
here mainly carrying on t he struggle since the marches in 1965
which a lot of people don ' t seem to understand . Most of the
changes which have occurred in Selma and in the Black Belt did
not occur on Edmund Bridge but in a longer march that goes on
even as we speak . As you know there are p i ckets i n the streets
of Selma now. Almost no progress in Civil Rights has come to
Selma voluntarily or nowhere in the Black community . When I
speak of Selma I am really talking about five or six different
counties , of which Selma is a kind of unofficial capital. I
suppose as just a backgr ound , right across the central sect ion of
Alabama from the Mississippi line to the Georgia line there is
something that is call ed the Black Belt of Alabama and white
southerners are anxious to point out that that comes from the
color of the soil . That mayor may not be true but I know that
this section was where t he great slave plantations were , the
large slave plantations , and that is why until this day most of
the counti es in the Black Belt region are predominantly Black ,
70% Black. That is where you have the Black elected officials
2
and so forth . If you start in Montgomery and go East , that is
called roughly loosely the Eastern Section of the Black Belt ,
Tuskegee Institute . That ' s where Booker T . Washington set up
shop in Tuskeegee, in the Black Belt where the Blacks work. West
of Montgomery would be the Western Section or half of the Black
Belt . That is the section that Selma is the hub of . People come
here to shop and all that kind of thing in Selma . It sets the
trend and the standards . Also the Black Belt area is the p l ace
most resistant to social change in general and Civil Rights in
particular. Somebody cal led it the South African Syndrome
because Blacks so outnumber whites . So any little inch we give
you will be drowned in a Bl ack sea , so you get this stiff
resistance . On the other hand , Selma has always been a
remarkable little town. No other town I know of in the South or
North with 20,000 peopl e has always had four or five Black
colleges . That has always been the case here. It is the case
now . No other town the s i ze of Selma -- 20 , 000 or between 10 , 000
and 13 , 000 Blacks when I was coming up would have three or four
Black doctors , three or more Black dentists. Even today in towns
the size of Selma which the census says there is about 28 , 000 ,
you don ' t find a town this size with three or four Black
dentists , three or four Black doctors . As a matter of fact , some
don ' t have any Bl ack doctors . Selma has always been peculiar ,
mostly peculiar because it has in addition to the three other
Bl ack colleges , it has always been headquarters of Selma
University which is owned by Black Baptists and which was put
3
there primarily to train Black Baptist preachers , even to this
day . So it is now a four year institution . I think it just
became that last year . The primary emphasis remains on training
Black Baptist preachers . I ' ve always been amused and interested
in the fact that D. V. Jemison , Reverend D. V. Jemison, a little
Black preacher in Selma , Alabama , the principal there , the
preacher , the pastor, Tabernacle Baptist Church , clawed his way
from Selma to become the head of all the Black Baptists in the
United States. In fact his father is now [son , Theodore J.
Jemison] . And Jemison was a trustee at Selma University which
tells you something about how unique this little town is .
ANDREW MANIS: Why do you think it is?
MR . CHESTNUT : Primarily the fact that it is the hub of the Black
Belt , commercially , intellectually and otherwise . And I don ' t
think that that is unrelated to the fact that Selma University
was put here years and years ago and there she waS training these
Black Baptist preachers primarily were the leaders of the race. I
think that has had a profound impact on Selma.
ANDREW MANIS : What philosophy have you perceived as a long time
observer of Selma University? Is there a particular philosophy
that governs the educational process in Selma that so shapes the
ministers it produces?
MR . CHESTNUT : I would think that Selma University would be a
mainline Black Baptist operation. I am now the chairman of the
deacon board of First Baptist Church where Fred was pastor .
First Baptist , where, I think we have to look at it this way, for
4
example, when I was growing up, and even before then, the primary
leaders in the Black community were preachers, mostly Baptist,
two or three school principals and the chairman of the deacon
board. There were no Black lawyers. There were no
industrialists. There were no journalists. There was no intra
power structure within the Black community. If one, or if an
institution were training Black preachers then they have an
inordinate impact on what happened or what did not happen in the
Black community. Selma University, in my opinion, was mainstream
in the sense that it was not rocking the boat at any cause.
Selma University, even as late as in the 1960s, when we were
taking children out of the public schools and out of Selma
University and putting them in lines and marches to demonstrate.
Some of the stoutest opposition came from a Dr. J. A. OWens, who
was then the president of Selma University, who threatened to
expel any students from Selma University who participated in
those marches. I remember Owens coming to my office on three or
four occasions to argue his case.
ANDREW MANIS: And his case was?
MR. CHESTNUT: That you cannot beg white people on Monday and
spit in their face on Tuesday, that there would be no Black
education in America, let alone in Alabama that amounted to
anything except for the generosity of white people, and that
changes would occur. The social change occurred gradually and
slowly and that you could not accelerate that process with any
lasting success, that you could create more harm than good and
5
that he was not going to let us drag that institution down in
these senseless marches and so forth and he was prepared to
suspend any students who got involved.
ANDREW MANIS: Let me move to asking you a bit more specifically
about First Baptist Church. You mentioned it. In terms of its
history and its unique personality.
MR. CHESTNUT: First Baptist had the largest auditorium. It is
the largest Black church, building wise, in the whole Black Belt.
Not just the Western section. I don't think there is any Black
church in Montgomery with an auditorium larger than First
Baptist. It was built by a Black contractor who later became one
of the powers down there on the board of deacons. The building
itself is awesome in the sense that there are no supporting
pillars anywhere in this whole church. As a matter of fact, I'd
like to take you by there and show you. No supporting pillars or
anything and I remember my grandparents telling me about how the
members of the church would be walking through the streets and if
they saw a brick in the streets they would pick it up and take it
horne and each Sunday when they carne to church they would bring
these boxes of bricks and things they had picked up during the
week. Many of the bricks in that building down there carne that.
First Baptist has always reveled in the title First Baptist.
There is a mentality there that they are really and literally
first in so many ways. Even today there are some there who would
tell you with a kind of snobbishness that all the other Baptist
churches in one way or another descended from First Baptist which
6
is literally true. But you see there is something snobbish about
the way that is said. The president of Selma University, more
often than not, was the president of First Baptist. The past
president, the dean of theology out there, so there has been this
close connection. The people in First Baptist have always
considered themselves to be somehow a cut above most Black
people. That is not near as pronounced at First Baptist now as
it was when I was a boy. But there are some remnants of that
down there now.
ANDREW MANIS: Is the building that you commented on, was that
the building the church had when Shuttlesworth was pastor?
MR. CHESTNUT: That's right.
ANDREW MANIS: No recent building?
MR. CHESTNUT: No, it is the same building but a tornado hit it.
I'll show you a picture -- I'll take you down there. It's just
two blocks away. A tornado hit it several years ago. You will
see it was knocked out at both sides. We had to rebuild it but
it is just like it was. Same building.
ANDREW MANIS: You grew up in this church?
MR. CHESTNUT: That's right. It is the only church I have ever
been a member of. My grandfather was a hell raiser down there.
As a matter of fact, I sit, he was a deacon and I sit in the
chair he sat in.
ANDREW MANIS: By hell raiser, you mean what?
MR. CHESTNUT: He and a man by the name of J. D. Pritchard, who
was the chairman of the deacon board. Pritchard was a good bit
7
better educated. He ran a printing company. He printed a whole
lot of church bulletins. As a matter of fact he made a living
out of the church. He and my grandfather literally ran that
church and they were tyrants.
ANDREW MANIS: What sort of pastors -- you mentioned usually the
pastors or the presidents of Selma University were pastors of
your church. How would you say Shuttlesworth compared to
previous pastors?
MR. CHESTNUT: Shuttlesworth was never really accepted by First
Baptist. They never would have accepted him. Shuttlesworth to
them would be what my mother calls a country preacher. First
Baptist always really considered Shuttlesworth to be beneath that
church. Shuttlesworth, how old is he?
ANDREW MANIS: He's ah-h-h, 67.
MR. CHESTNUT: Shuttlesworth was a very young man when he came
through here from Selma University. I remember him living in the
parsonage which was about three blocks, matter of fact it is
still the parsonage. We rent it out now. But I used to deliver
groceries from my father's store down to that big family inn.
Shuttlesworth was a relatively young man lacking the polish, the
educational background and so forth that First Baptist Church
liked and preferred because like I told you First Baptist was
snobbish.
ANDREW MANIS: Let me stop you there and ask you, you say he did
not have the education and yet he was a graduate of Selma. That
seems like a contradiction to me.
8
MR. CHESTNUT: Well now, what First Baptist would prefer, there
is some preacher had gone of to Virginia Union or Howard
University and had a Ph.D. and from Atlanta University. Though
they were close to Selma University and all of that, they would
really prefer somebody who had gone off to a more prestigious
institution and other churches ought to have somebody from Selma
University.
ANDREW MANIS: What do you recall about the circumstances
surrounding Shuttlesworth's coming to be the pastor at First
Baptist?
MR. CHESTNUT: I was a boy in junior high school and I really
don't recall that much about his coming to First Baptist. I
remember my grandfather who every morning got up preaching about
First Baptist. I came later to understand that Black men having
been denied the opportunity to engage in regular politics and
power struggles and because they didn1t have the background or
the connections or the money to become industrial giants -- all
of that more often than not came out inside the Black Baptist
church. That is where he flexed his muscles. That is the one
place he felt that he was a man and in charge. And then some of
them were raising hell all the time when there was really nothing
to raise hell about. But that was their sense of their politics
and their whole macho thing of being male and being in charge.
My grandfather used to get up every morning before he went to
work. My grandfather would get up every morning raising hell
about this or that at church, more often than not creating
9
problems where none really existed. The first time I ever heard
Fred Shuttl esworth ' s name came from the lips of my grandfather
who said that he thought that the boy would do all right. He was
talking to my grandmother. And my grandmother gave him that look
because she understood what that all meant . The years later that
I came to understand what my grandfather had in mind and what J.
D. Pritchard had in mind . That i s how Fred Shuttlesworth got at
First Baptist in the first place . They had been dealing with
some candidates who were pretty educated and all that . Pritchard
and them were having some problems dealing with them . They were
determined that they were going to get somebody they could lead
around by the nose. That is what they meant by "that boy ." That
i s the first I ever heard of Fred Shuttlesworth.
ANDREW MANIS: Was there any particular issue where they came to
be at odds or was this just a general muscle flexing exerci se?
MR. CHESTNUT: Shuttlesworth , as I said , was never in my opinion
really accepted in that church . There were vague complaints and
rumblings almost from the day he set foot in that church .
Privately you would hear , "Well, he is not our type " or "He does
not speak well enough . Well , what they didn ' t like was he was
not the president of Selma University. He wasn ' t a man of great
prestige . It was said from time to time, "He ' s just a little
country preacher. He ought to have a little country church and
not First Baptist ." It may be that in time Shuttlesworth could
have preached out of that . Black preachers have been known to
preach themselves out of the worst difficulties . They catch them
10
in the bed with a woman and all that and they come back and
preach their way out of that. He might have been able to preach
his way out of that if that had been the only problem. But even
then there was , by those standards , there was some militancy in
Shuttlesworth ' s sermons and that certainly was not going to set
well in First Baptist. That was not going to set wel l anywhere
in any Black church in Selma and from time to time Shuttlesworth ,
as well as making comments privately , I mean in just casual
comments , in formal sermons there was a hint of militancy about
his preaching .
ANDREW MANIS , I ' d like for you to elaborate on that if you
could , the nature of thi s militancy , is it primarily a kind of a
religious militancy o r did it shade off into .. .
MR . CHESTNUT : It was a social militancy. It was a harbinger of
what was to come . I think to really get a handle on Fred
Shuttlesworth one had to understand that of all of the leaders
around Martin Luther King , it was only Shuttlesworth who created
a Movement where he was and remained after the Movement . C. T .
Vivian and Wyatt and none of these peopl e did that . They came
and went with King. Shuttlesworth created , and I heard Martin
say this any number of times , except for Fred Shuttlesworth , it
is unlikely there would have been a Birmingham Movement . It was
not merely that Bull Connor was in Birmingham that Martin went to
Birmi ngham . Hell, there was Bull Connors allover Alabama . But
it was also because Fred Shuttlesworth was there . I've hear d
Martin say that . Even when Fred Shuttlesworth was in Selma there
11
was a hint of this social militancy , and I don ' t mean
theologically, in what he had to say . In his day when he was
here , the police were the law , literally . When they came to your
house and knocked on the door and you said "Who is it? " and they
said "The law , " and they did what they wanted. I mean, you could
kill a Black and they would not have an inquest about it . They
would just say , "Well , the nigger got out of line" and that was
the end of that . And you had the l owest type of white people who
were police officers . Nobody else wanted it . I t didn 't pay
anything . So you had a ve r y dangerous and outrageous situation .
It was not all that uncommon for a Black to be k i lled like a dog
for nothing . But the unspoken understanding in Selma -- Black
Selma -- when that happened, Black Selma hardly mentioned it . If
they did , it was only to another Black that you really trusted .
You said it quietly and you just mentioned what had happened .
That was a l l and then you would go back as usua l . It was not
unknown for Shuttlesworth to make a reference if somebody got
slaughtered , if some Black got shot down like a dog by a
policeman , Shuttlesworth would make some kind of a reference to
that and a negative reference. He was known to mention justice .
He also was known to mention something about voting and he did
that. That made my grandfather and J . D. Pritchard and all of
them extremely upset . They had all these connections with white
bankers . Many of them worked for these white people downtown.
These white bankers , white leaders , white politicians were
playing a game. If a Black could ingratiate himself with a white
12
banker he could say, "You know , we got all this -- that little
ole preacher we got down there, it seems to me he ' s anti- white or
something like that and I 'm gonna get rid of him . " But the
banker wouldn ' t even have to suggest it to them , that Black
deacon would ingratiate himself even more so when he back up
these powerful white people. He became a good nigger and all
that . I don ' t know that that happened in Shuttlesworth's case
but I know generally that ' s the way things were . I know that
Shuttlesworth ran the risk of al l of that by referring from time
to time to some of these taboo subjects. I don ' t mean to
indicate to you that at that point Shuttlesworth was anywhere
near a Civil Rights leader . He wasn ' t. I don't mean t o indicate
to you that he was in the pulpit every Sunday preaching a
militant theology or a militant sociol ogy . He wasn ' t. He was a
gifted, main line Black Baptist preacher but somewhat more
sensitive to some of these other things and there was some of the
rebel in him. I suppose that had something to do with the fact
that he was a young man on the way up.
ANDREW MANIS : Shuttlesworth always seemed to , well , let me back
up and say that there is a long tradition in the Black church,
particularly the Black Baptist church , of very powerful pastors
and a deep strong sense of authority that churches confer on
their pastors . Coupled with that was in Shuttlesworth as I have
grown to understand him , perhaps a deeper sense of his own
authority as pastor . I guess the question that I want you to
answer for me, as you compare Shuttlesworth with other pastors at
13
First Baptist and other Black pastors you have seen in your
lifetime , would you say that he has a stronger more dictatorial
presence or attitude than other Black Baptist pastors that you
have encountered in your life?
MR . CHESTNUT : I guess the only way I can approach that is to say
this to you. First Baptist was unwilling -- well , the officers ,
J. D. Pritchard and my grandfather , the deacon board and the
trustee board were unwilling to give to Shuttlesworth the
authority and the power to maneuver and manipulate that it would
have given the one that they would have considered of their kind.
Had Shuttlesworth been the president of Selma University, certain
powers at First Baptist would have accrued to him without
argument. Because he wasn ' t , there were those in that church who
were determined that he would never have those powers . I don't
know whether Shuttlesworth was more dictatorial than other Black
preachers . I only know that he would never get the chance in
First Baptist . Because there were those who considered him
temporary there from the first moment he came. He just wasn ' t
their type and they were not about to give him any powers.
ANDREW MANIS: Was there a relatively large negative vote to call
him when he was called?
MR . CHESTNUT : What I heard was there was not a large negative
vote. At First Baptist, whatever the deacons and trustees
decide, the church was going to go pretty much along with that
because the strongest males are on those two boards. The rest
are females and any other kind of thing. And the rest are trying
14
to get on the board . So there would not have been a large
negative vote once there was a decision to call him . There would
just not be the enthusiasm that would ordinarily be there in the
calling of a new pastor . There was also a tacit understanding
that he is temporary here any young man on his way up where we
don ' t think he is going to be able to make it and last with us.
My understanding is that Shuttlesworth would never been called
down there except there were some powerful preachers they
respected who were saying "Give the boy a chance ." Otherwise
they never would have done it.
ANDREW MANIS: It didn ' t occur to me to ask if your grandfather
and J . D. Pritchard were so powerful and so quickly took a, for
lack of a better word, dislike to Shuttlesworth , why he was
called in the first place?
MR. CHESTNUT: My grandmother said to me one or two times, " I
think that Professor Dinkins .
ANDREW MANIS: The president?
MR. CHESTNUT: (Yeah) who was a lieutenant or captain in World
War I, who had a Ph.D . from Brown University, lived in the
largest house with stained windows and all that and a man of
great prestige and learned , literally so, he had considerable
influence over J . D. Pritchard and my grandfather. And my
grandmother indicated to me that Shuttlesworth had some powerful
people in opportuning her husband and J . D. Pritchard that this
was a step up for Shuttlesworth. I got the impression that
Shuttlesworth was campaigning like he was running for office.
15
That's what she said. I don ' t know. But I do know that Denkins
had great sway with Pritchard and my grandfather. And if he went
to them and said "Give the boy a shot " it is more than likely
that they would do it. And it was uncharacteristic for my
grandfather to even refer to a preacher he didn't like or look
down on "as the boy ." Because he had more respect for the
pulpit. Now that is a phrase that would come directly from
Dinkins because Shuttlesworth was a student at his university and
all that. My grandfather was told by somebody that he thought
that the boy would do all right . So I suspect
ANDREW MANIS: Now in other interviews that I have done with
Reverend Shuttlesworth , I get obviously his point of view . I am
wondering if you have a point of view about why Dr . Denkins was
so enamored with Fred Shuttlesworth when there were several other
preacher boys who were studying for the ministry at Selma,
persons like Reverend [N. H.] Smith in Birmingham, persons who in
some way had to have more polish than Shuttlesworth . At least do
now. Why do you think Dinkins was so taken with Shuttlesworth so
that he became kind of a protege?
MR . CHESTNUT: First , I don ' t know that he became a protege of
Dinkins but Fred Shuttlesworth would have a similar impact on
Martin Luther King but for different reasons. Shuttlesworth is a
strong man . There is no question about that. Shuttlesworth was
-- the fact that his age that he would be vying for or thinking
that he could pastor First Baptist says a hell of a lot about him
right there. Most preachers his age would not even be vying for
16
First Baptist . They would likely concede that to some of the
elders , people with more prestige and more education .
Shuttlesworth wouldn ' t concede to a damn thing . Shuttlesworth
was out there campaigning for that job . There was also a kind of
intensity about Shuttlesworth then and now. An intensity
commitment you might want to call it . He wanted to be an
effective , important preacher and he was not necessarily wedded
to going about that in the traditional way . Shuttlesworth was
prepared to take on the Black establishment if it was going to
promote Shuttlesworth. He had a good mind and he worked hard .
He had a family and yet he was going to school; a man of thrift .
All of these things woul d have powerful appeal to Dinkins the
same way they would have powerful appeal to Booker T . Washington .
Black Baptist preachers , many of them have been notorious
womanizers and take a little nip and all that. Denkins was dead
set against all that. He was straight as an arrow and
Shuttlesworth, there was hardly a hint about him morally and all
that . There were ones at First Baptist trying to find -- they
it -- the same with Mrs . Shuttlesw . All of these things
have an appeal to a man like Dinkins. Shuttlesworth was not his
protege but he would be one of his prize pupils I would say .
ANDREW MANIS : The comment you made about his willingness to take
on the Black establishment to use your words "if it would promote
Shuttlesworth" could be interpreted as an inordinate ambition .
MR . CHESTNUT: I think that ' s true.
ANDREW MANIS: Would you say that?
17
MR. CHESTNUT: I think that's true. Shuttlesworth had been
promoting Shuttlesworth for a long long time and he ' s damn good
at it . He's come from nowhere and became a principal figure in
the Civil Rights struggle . He became a principal advisor to
Martin Luther King though there were people there far more
learned than Fred Shuttlesworth. There weren't any there who
were more courageous though. There were some courageous people
with Martin Luther King but they weren't more courageous than
Fred Shuttlesworth . Shuttlesworth had an understanding of people
and politics that most Black preachers don 't even have. They
just go along with whatever the program is and try to promote
that church and promote themselves. Shuttlesworth was a kind of
contradiction in the sense that he was ambitious in promoti ng
himself and all that but not so much in the traditional sense
that he was unaware that the larger politics of the city he was
living in and prepared to understand it and use it. He did that
in Birmingham . Martin Luther King d i d not have to go to
Birmingham to tell Shuttlesworth that Bull Connor was vulnerable
and it was a situation that could be exploi ted. Shuttlesworth
was t elling Martin Luther King that. Now I know that to be a
fact . One of the reasons I know that i s that Marti n had been to
Birmingham and they were trying to decide to go back . I and some
others were trying to get him to come to Selma . We l ost out .
They eventually came to Selma but they went back to Birmingham
and then came to Selma . The reason they came back to Selma; I
mean the r eason they went to Birmingham was Fred Shuttlesworth.
18
Fred Shuttlesworth understood that situation. He understood the
Black establishment. He deliberately cultivated Dinkins and
others and he knew how to do that. He was promoting Fred
Shuttlesworth. I think the primary difference in Fred
Shuttlesworth and most Black preachers of his generation in the
South were that they under no circumstances were going to step
outside of tradition. They were not going to take on the
establishment Black or white. Shuttlesworth would promote
himself as far as he could in both of these areas without taking
them on but if he reached a point where he had to take them on,
he was willing to do that. The mere fact that he was out there
talking about pastoring First Baptist, is a signal of that here
is a young man on the way up. He doesn't care about tradition
except that it works for him. Where it doesn't, he discards it.
Lastly, I think that Dinkins was intrigued in Shuttlesworth in
that Shuttlesworth was everything that Dinkins wasn't, and
probably wished he wasn't.
ANDREW MANIS: So recognizing a degree of healthy ambition in
Shuttlesworth as you do, other writers who talked about Dr. King
I think at times have been overly conscious of the egotism of
someone like Shuttlesworth over against what they perceive as the
humility of Martin Luther King.
MR. CHESTNUT: Martin wasn't all that humble, but go ahead.
ANDREW MANIS: Well, I'll let you comment on that, too, if you
will, but I guess I am asking you in some ways to help me
understand this question of the egotism of Shuttlesworth. At
19
what point would you criticize it? I am probably asking you to
oversimplify this and I recognize that -- I mean some people
would call that kind of egotism sin. I guess I am asking you to
evaluate it theologically or something or ethically how you
interpret the kind of self-promotion that you are describing.
Would you generally give it -- on an ethical scale would you give
it a high score?
MR. CHESTNUT: I don 't know about scoring it. But in the two
years that he was here and looking back through eyes of all these
years of my own experience I think that Shuttlesworth had the
best of both worlds in that he was genuinely concerned and a
sincere preacher, promoting the Lord's gospel, saving souls so to
speak and really trying to do something to help his people live a
fuller life. At the same t i me, by doing that, he promoted
himself in that the more successful he would be in promoting
himself, the greater his opportunity to carry out his mission. I
don 't think that that social position, or that position is unique
to Shuttlesworth. Almost instantaneously I can think of any
number of Black Baptist preachers who have gone forward pretty
much on the same thing. One that comes to mind immedi ately is
that of Adam Clayton Powell (you've heard of the Abyssian Baptist
Church) who went on to Congress and all of that. He was the
spokesman of Black America, of Black Baptist preachers, who
obviously promoted Adam and who obviously had an ego probably the
size of Harlem. But in promoting Adam he was able to do a whole
lot of good. Looking back I would not have considered
20
Shuttlesworth as any more dictatorial than most Black Baptist
preachers or any more an egotist. Most of were treated as
princes anyway. What I see about Shuttlesworth, as I keep
saying, the intensity of his commitment and his sensitivity to
certain matters that others were accustomed and conditioned to
overlooking. I see a young man from the rural, ambitious, but
probably not to a fault. Strong, but I think that in part
derives from what he had learned to that point about how Black
preachers operate and who is supposed to be in charge of the
church and all that. I think he was merely imitating his elders
who were his predecessors. I didn't find him, as I said, now he
didn't get the chance, he was just here about two years, he
didn't get the chance if he had the dictatorial tendencies, he
didn't get the chance to exercise. Also, Shuttlesworth was
perceptive enough to know looking back that in any battle in
First Baptist with J. D. Pritchard and Louellen Phillips on the
other side, Shuttlesworth was bound to lose. I think he was
shrewd enough to try and resolve what he could before the battle
lines were drawn. He was forever visiting with J. D. Pritchard,
whose printing shop was right down the street from my father's
market. He was also forever visiting with my grandfather whom I
was in and out of the house. I stayed over there much of the
time. Even then I understood that he was doing what almost any
preacher, even a preacher who was accepted down there, was doing.
He was paying court to the two most powerful egotists and
troublemakers down there. That is what he was doing. And
21
Shuttlesworth understood that.
ANDREW MANIS: It sounds very much like you, if you were
evaluating that situation in terms of who was right and who was
wrong, it sounds like you would come down on the side of
Shuttlesworth rather than Pritchard and your grandfather.
MR. CHESTNUT: I would. And that is not because of what
Shuttlesworth subsequently did with his life and the great
contributions he made in Birmingham and elsewhere in the
Movement. It is because I really don't think that there was any
acceptable basis to have dismissed him from that church and I
think that had he stayed there we would have been better off.
Not merely at First Baptist. I think Selma would have been
better off had we been able to keep a man like Shuttlesworth.
And I think only instinctively, I think people like my
grandfather and J. D. Pritchard understood that and they were on
the opposite side. And that is one of the reasons Shuttlesworth
had to leave. Shuttlesworth did not corne to First Baptist trying
to make enemies. He came there trying to make friends. He tried
to have a church program but they were not going to let him. I
opposed it. The best thing that ever happened to Fred
Shuttlesworth is that First Baptist discharged him.
ANDREW MANIS: But he was fired as you understand?
MR. CHESTNUT: Oh, they voted him out. There is no question
about it. He had a different view of that. What does he say?
ANDREW MANIS: He doesn't use the word "fired."
MR. CHESTNUT: What does he say?
22
ANDREW MANIS: He leaves it more general than that -- that "I
left."
MR. CHESTNUT: My mother, who only went to church on a sporadic
basis , as a matter of fact I was just talking to her this morning
and I was telling her that you were coming here. She admitted to
me, and I heard her say this once or twice before, my mother and
my aunt, who only went down there on a sporadic basis, didn't
hardly know what was going on but my grandfather recruited her to
come down to that meeting to vote against Shuttlesworth. They
voted against him.
ANDREW MANIS: You said he wanted to institute a program. Do you
have any recollection of the kind of program, would anything he
wanted to do would have been rejected by the power people.
MR. CHESTNUT: I don't know whether they would have just willy
nilly objected to anything he would have had to do. He would
have to have a program that was traditional in every way. But
did not undermine or reflect negatively on the way the people at
First Baptist saw themselves. For example, if he is talking
about feeding the poor and all that, that was going to have to be
done in First Baptist ' s spire. It certainly was not going to be
done equals for feeding each other. It's going to have to be the
hand me down, that there are people superior here and there are
people inferior here. Any other program that he would institute
there would have to take into consideration these prejudices and
all these things which was running so deep in First Baptist. I
tell you another thing that he was very concerned about. I
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remember talking about this. Country preaching. They decided he
was a country preacher . They did not want any country preaching
and any country singing in First Baptist. First Baptist had a
big organ and all that and they got their spire music. I don ' t
know whether you know, you probably do, Black preachers have , a
lot of them have this sing-song they get into when they roll it
to a climax. They didn ' t want any of that at First Baptist. If
he brought that in , he woul d be in deep trouble. They didn't
want any country singing and they didn't want any country
preaching .
ANDREW MANIS: Country singing, just to get the terminology here,
is country singing and country preaching the same thing
basically?
MR. CHESTNUT: Well it is kind of a morning thing. If you go to
a Black church and have a devotional, it is acceptable at First
Baptist for the devotional period. But you can't that kind of
moaning anywhere else . Even today, you know , in the Black
church , you know, we respond to preaching. First Baptist Church
has always looked down on that. Even now I'll say "Say it!"
They don ' t like it .
ANDREW MANIS: So would you say that he would sort of move into
the country preaching mode regularly?
MR. CHESTNUT: Not often but from time to time he would get happy
himself and wind up in that sing- song thing and you would see
people looking around like - - but he was a smart fellow . He was
aware that that was not really acceptable there. He didn ' t do it
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often, but he'd get caught up sometimes just on a Sunday. If
that was really Fred Shuttlesworth, he might still be here. He
was comfortable with that and it would come out from time to time
but they didn't like it.
ANDREW MANIS: It's interesting that you mention that because
talking to his church members in Bethel in Birmingham where he
went after he left First Baptist, it is their recollection, at
least one person, that he tended to move into this mode regularly
almost every Sunday. It would seem that that was his more ...
MR. CHESTNUT: His natural style. He was inhibited down here by
all kind of traditions that are part of First Baptist. I guess
he was relieved to work the way it was best for him. He really
got caught up in it.
ANDREW MANIS: Were you yourself there in any discussions that
the church had?
MR. CHESTNUT: No, I was a young boy.
ANDREW MANIS: Did you vote when the vote was taken to dismiss?
MR. CHESTNUT: No, no, no. My grandmother and I were opposed.
My grandmother didn't even vote. That's one reason why my
grandfather recruited his daughter-in-law. She didn't approve of
that.
ANDREW MANIS: Why didn't she go and vote the opposite way?
MR. CHESTNUT: Because it would create all kind of problems at
home. So she just left it up to them and went on about her
business.
ANDREW MANIS: So you remember yourself having a sense of being
25
opposed to what was goi ng on?
MR. CHESTNUT: I remember talking to my grandmother about it.
ANDREW MANIS : What do you recall about your conver sation?
MR. CHESTNUT: I remember her saying that Louel l yn and Pritchard
ought to leave the man alone and that they were forever raising
this and raising that in God ' s House and she was concerned that
somehow it mi ght even split the church because there were some
people really supporting Fred Shuttlesworth. If they were not
s upporting Shuttlesworth , they'd had enough of Pritchard and my
grandfather and that whole clique down there and all that. My
grandmother dearly loved that church but she dearly loved her
husband and in talking to me she was really in a sense almost
talking to herself. She was searching for a way in how she could
deal with Louellyn and to re i n him in and all that and I remember
saying to her that Shuttlesworth was out of place there and that
they didn 't want him in the first place and he knew that and
that's all they were in behind because he was country . She
real l y got on my case about that. Even today my mother denies
that they don't want to touch it, they will never admit it. They
will never admit that First Baptist is snooty . They won't. My
grandmother said that didn't have anything to do with it. It
wasn't that at all .
ANDREW MANIS: It was the country bias?
MR. CHESTNUT: Yeah. It was just that Shuttlesworth would not
drink Louellyn and them's water. That's the way they put it.
They were determined that they weren't going to have nobody down
26
there that they couldn ' t control and she just didn't like it . I
kept saying that I didn 't think that that was all there was to it
and she knew that was not all there was to it. They were scared
of it and they didn't like it and they were going to get rid of
h i m one way or another. I talked to her more than once about
that .
ANDREW MANIS: Occasionally you see things like this happen and
the people who are more or l ess in control and recruit the right
number of votes are able to have their will done in the
congregation and sometimes you discover that you actually went
and you polled the individual members of the congregation
individually apart from the i nfluence of these power peopl e that
they would have been in support of the pastor.
MR. CHESTNUT: Probably .
ANDREW MANIS : Do you think that is the case? Ironically , it is
a strange quirk of the way democratically run churches operate ,
but occasionally you find where really the people are for the
pastor but somehow or a nother through circumstance the vote turns
out negativel y.
MR . CHESTNUT: Let me respond to it this way. I mentioned
earlier to you that Black preachers have been known , white
preacher s too, who preach out of all kinds of difficulties.
They've come to church and have not been liked initially. But
peopl e would come to l ove them. So some preachers have been able
to do a whole lot of things from the pul pit and it may be that
Shuttlesworth could have preached his way into the hearts of the
27
members in the pews in time. But it would have been an uphill
fight all the way. Because, remember, that whole church, not
just the officers and all that, we are First Baptist literally,
and he was never what they considered the caliber of it. I don't
know how far he had come in dealing with that when they came
around to have the vote to discharge him. I rather doubt that he
had a majority. But there is no question that some people in
that church supported him. And there is no doubt that some
people who, if they didn't give a damn about him, they had had
enough of Louellyn Phillips and J. D. Pritchard. But Pritchard
was a man who, because he owned his own business, and this is in
line with what you were just talking about, he could take off a
half a day, a whole day, whatever he needed, and if necessary, go
from member's house to member's house and he did it, campaigning
and all like that. He had considerable respect in that church as
chairman of the deacon board and superintendent of the Sunday
school for fifty years. But he also had some people in there who
didn't like him. My grandfather was not an educated man and he
looked up to Pritchard, at least to the extent that he would look
up to anybody, because of Pritchard's education. But my
grandfather was street wise. One of the most perceptive
individuals I have ever known in terms of reading people and all
that. And one of them he read was Pritchard and he was close to
Louellyn Phillips. Louellyn, as I said, had no education but he
could see around corners that Pritchard couldn't. Shuttlesworth
was well aware of all of those things. In even trying to preach
28
his way into the good graces of the members in the pews he had to
be careful not to alienate unnecessarily either Pritchard or
Louellyn. He knew that Pritchard was better educated that
Shuttlesworth and he knew that Louellyn had these gifts and all
and both had enormous influence in that church. So Shuttlesworth
would have problems. They would sit there and if he were
politicking, if they understood that the nature of his sermon is
more politics and more of a promotion for Shuttlesworth then they
would be some reaction which would increase their rumbling and
going on. Shuttlesworth was not unaware of all that.
ANDREW MANIS: Do you remember any of the sort of crystallizing
events that lead to his departure?
MR. CHESTNUT: I just remember the night of the meeting because
my mother went and that was highly unusual.
ANDREW MANIS: After Shuttlesworth left and went to Bethel in
Birmingham and still later became involved with the Civil Rights
Movement after the Montgomery boycott and began the Movement in
1956 in Birmingham and on into his Civil Rights activities
through the sixties, did he ever come back to Selma during those
years?
MR. CHESTNUT: I don't recall him ever come back to preach. I am
sure he did. I don't recall. But he would come back to Selma
from time to time. There are people from Selma who have very
kind and respect for feelings for Fred Shuttlesworth. I called
about four or five members of the church as chairman of the
deacon board because I wanted to make them available to you.
29
They r efu sed . I talked t o Mrs. Morningshine. They don't want to
say anything about Shuttlesworth . They just refused to do it.
They said they wanted you to know that he was a young man on his
way up and that he did good but he wasn't here l ong enough for
them to form any great j udgments about him which would be a lie.
ANDREW MANIS: When I talked with a coupl e of them on the phone
who had r efused t o t a lk with me .
MR. CHESTNUT: Did you talk ,with Lucille Taylor?
ANDREW MANIS: I talked with them on the phone but not in an
interview. I guess what I am interested i n asking is that , well ,
as a young person who was here, who has been a member of this
church and who a l so later became involved in Civil Rights i n
Selma , i s the r e any way that you would say that Shuttle sworth had
some influence on you?
MR. CHESTNUT: Not really . I wasn't that close to him and
Shuttlesworth wasn 't here long enough to have that kind of
impact. No , I wouldn ' t think so.
ANDREW MANIS: As the Movement more or less began to •
MR. CHESTNUT: I 'll tell you one thing though. As the chairman
of t he deacon board I agreed we have a young pastor there now.
He is about 35 years old and he has got all these degrees . There
would be no r egular joint meetings of the trustees and the
deacons at First Bapti st, which i s the opposite of a hundred
year s of tradition down there, that deacons would do what deacons
traditionally do and trustees would do what they tradi tionall y do
-- t he tactic behind this i s that I didn't want those two boards
30
to get into some powerful clique at First Baptist and dictate to
the young preacher. One of the reasons I insisted on that goes
back to Shuttlesworth and some other things. While He hasn't had
any impact on be Civil-Rights-wise, I also insisted, and I told
them this when they were talking about making me the chairman of
the deacon board. I consider the pastor the leader of the
church. We as deacons are there to assist him. And that is all
I intend to do as long as I am the chairman of that board. We
are not copastors and I am very sensitive whenever I see either
the deacons or trustees trying to interpose themselves between
the pastor and the flock. Because I remember my grandfather and
I remember J. D. Pritchard.
ANDREW MANIS: Just for background for myself, what are the
differing roles of the board of trustees and the board of deacons
in First Baptist Church and maybe you want to comment more
generally, in Black Baptist preachers.
MR. CHESTNUT: Well, most Black Baptist churches are legal
corporations, legal entities. The law requires that you have
trustees so that somebody will be responsible for the corporate
assets and the business side of the church. That is what
trustees do. They keep the property up. They handle the money.
They pay the pastor. They pay the choirs and that sort of thing.
The deacons in the Baptist church come not so much as a creature
of the law. They don't come at all as a creature of the law but
scripturally. They assist the pastor in communion and visiting
the sick and looking out for the widows and that sort of thing.
31
ANDREW MANIS: Deacons in Black Baptist churches don't have any
particular say-so about business activities.
MR. CHESTNUT: They are not supposed to, but in actuality, as at
First Baptist, of course, what they do is, you find the same
people, more often than not, are deacons and trustees. Where
that is the case, the deacons insist on jOint meetings with the
trustees and so that a joint meeting becomes almost a steering
committee inside the church with more power than the pastor.
That is why I had them agree that we are not going to have any
joint meetings. I am an attorney and I know more about deeds and
property and all that than any of them down there. But I don't
have anything to do with that because I am not a trustee. The
church would make me a trustee just like that if I asked but I am
not going to ask because I think that that line of demarcation
ought to be there to centralize all this power. Because the
moment you do that you are going to come up with people
interposing themselves between the pastor and the flock. Now I
don't believe in a preacher being a dictator in a church but I
think he has to have enough power to lead and to get his program
over and if you don't trust him to do that, you don't have any
business calling him in the first place.
ANDREW MANIS: I think it boils down to a fairly delicate balance
here and you do have, on occasion, pastors who, in a sense, grab
for more power.
MR. CHESTNUT: All the time. That is common.
ANDREW MANIS: When the newspapers in the early sixties -- well,
32
I have to correct myself because the Birmingham News didn't want
to talk about Shuttlesworth very much, but when the news services
and the Black newspapers and what not were full of discussions of
Fred Shuttlesworth, do you remember any conversations among the
folk at First Baptist, commenting about where their former pastor
had gone or what he was doing at that time?
MR. CHESTNUT: Oh yeah, ! didl I raised it and rubbed their
noses in it.
ANDREW MANIS: Can you give me an instance or two when you did
that?
MR. CHESTNUT: Well, for a long time we were in a struggle trying
to get Martin Luther King to come to Selma. And Martin Luther
King was undecided . He felt that in birmingham there was United
States Steel, headquartered not in Birmingham, but in Pittsburgh.
Probably more liberal than conservative and thus would only
tolerate Bull Connor to a point in pulling the ranks. Nothing
like that existed in the Black Belt. Moreover, Birmingham was a
city compact, communications and things were far easier. In the
Black Belt you had what you called the wide open spaces
different counties and all that. Far more difficult to organize
and motivate than a city. Thirdly, there was Shuttlesworth,
tried and proved in Birmingham. We had nobody here to match
that. We had Jim Clark. Well, they had Bull Connor. So, it was
of major concern to some of us in trying to persuade Martin
Luther King otherwise and it was of major concern to Fred
Shuttlesworth that the struggle was just beginning in Birmingham.
33
That is where Custer1s last stand ought to be fought so to speak.
So, I was forever getting up at First Baptist, not just at First
Baptist, but at various clubs around Selma. I was forever
getting praises and denouncing of Shuttlesworth all at the same
time. There were times when I thought that it was time for the
Movement to come here because the Bourbon planters in the Black
Belt had run Alabama politics for a thousand years. So many
years and, hell, United States Steel had never run politics in
the State of Alabama and never would. So goes the Black Belt.
So goes Alabama. If we could topple these white governments in
these predominantly Black counties in the Black Belt, Hell, we
could run Alabama. That wasn1t Shuttlesworth1s point of view and
so for a long time we in Selma considered Shuttlesworth a major
obstacle. We had grudging respect for him.
ANDREW MANIS: So you praised him for what he was doing in
Birmingham but denounced him because it was taking the attention
of the Movement away from Selma.
MR. CHESTNUT: We couldn1t get it to Selma. It had never come
here. It undermined our efforts to bring the Movement to Selma.
ANDREW MANIS: In 1964 and 1965 when the Movement did come to
Selma, did Shuttlesworth have any minor or major role?
MR. CHESTNUT: Oh, yeah, he was in and out of here making
speeches and all that. You could announce that Shuttlesworth was
going to speak at a mass meeting and you were sure to have a
crowd.
ANDREW MANIS: Do you recall, not necessarily any of his
34
speeches, but what role would you say he played in Selma?
MR. CHESTNUT: Martin Luther King, when he first came here, told
me that the initial and auspicious opposition to the Movement was
not going to come from whites and it was not going to come from
Blacks generally but it was going to come from his brothers of
the cloth -- the Black clergy. And he was just as right as he
could be. Most of them, as I said, mainstream, had these ties in
downtown Selma in the bank, the city hall, the courthouse and all
that and they were the leaders and they were against anything
that disturbed that arrangement. We could not even -- it took us
a long time to get a church that would even let us have a mass
meeting. Shuttlesworth was invaluable in dealing -- all of these
were his folks out there. They related far more to Shuttlesworth
than they did to Martin Luther King with his Ph.D. He was up
there and they were down there but Shuttlesworth was down there
with them and he could talk with them. Shuttlesworth undermined
a whole lot of opposition that Martin would have had, more so
than he got, from Black preachers and al that. Those who were
not going to participate, at least they would shut up. There is
also one thing to get up and denounce Martin Luther King is that
"interloper from Atlanta." You canlt very well denounce Fred
Shuttlesworth, who went to Selma University, who pastored First
Baptist, and 96 miles away in Birmingham, standing up and getting
beaten and everything. You can't very well call him an
interloper and tell him to go back to Atlanta. So he was very
important.
35
ANDREW MANIS: What about when he moved to Cincinnati, in 1964
and in 1965 and in fact, in 1963, when the big demonstrations
occurred in Birmingham, his official residence was no longer in
Birmingham.
MR. CHESTNUT: Well , Shuttlesworth was down here so often.
ANDREW MANIS: He was still identified.
MR. CHESTNUT: Yeah, I don ' t think most people even knew he ever
moved to Cincinnati.
ANDREW MANIS: So, I am interested in his role in Selma because
it is very difficult to dig that out, unless you talk to him,
unless you talk to people in Selma.
MR. CHESTNUT: I remember him making speeches . I remember many
strategy sessions. When he was in town he would be there and he
was a man that Martin Luther King listened to. Fred had proved
that he understood the power structure and how white people were
going to react and all of that. Martin had great respect for his
powers along those lines . The third thing I just mentioned to
you was that Shuttlesworth was at our level. With the average
little Black preacher around here, Martin Luther King never was
and their opposition to Martin would have been far more intense
except that he had Shuttlesworth out there running point man, and
they couldn't very well deal with him.
ANDREW MANIS; well , I appreciate your time.
MR. CHESTNUT: Okay , I am glad to talk with you. I have people
waiting out here .
36